Grand Final Game Day - Bumpers (7) d Wheelers (3)

The North Vikings Inline Hockey Club held its Grand Final extravaganza on Saturday.  All games from U10 up except ours were one goal games.  It was a great day, complete with flag, national anthem and a BBQ to keep the troops fed before the award presentations.  Profits from the BBQ and attendant cake stall went towards sending a Viking squad to the Barmera spring tournament.

We had a full roster, with Nicole in goal.  The Bumpers had their regular five with Matt the Goalie.  We had home advantage.  Game sheet is here.  What is not reflected on the game sheet is the penalty shot given the Bumpers when Crystal got called for unsportsmanlike conduct after losing her stick and throwing her glove towards/at (?) Craig (Nicole stopped the shot).

I have below posted video of various moments in the game.  I'll let it speak for itself.  There are a couple things I'd like to clarify however.  FIRSTLY, it was a closer game than the scoreline shows, though they did essentially outplay us and deserved their win.  There were two 'own goals' (one from a backwards pass that wasn't expected, another from a puck blinded goalie) and one that was a total 'fluke' (cleared hard up the boards by Craig, rebounded all the way to the back of the net).  Two goals were shorthanded.  Add to this the fact that I hit the post without reward and you can see that it was a close game.

The SECOND thing that (especially in retrospect) was memorable was the good feelings evident both during and after the game, more smiles than not and lots of hard but fair competition.  This despite the relatively large number of penalties (5 plus a penalty shot).

The Most Valuable Player in the game was judged to be Mel (Bumpers).  You can see in the video that her defensive play was tenacious, and she ended up with 1-3-4 on the game which is pretty darn good!

As for me, I scored one assist and was -1 for the game.  I had a quite a bit of energy left over at the end.  I was happy with my play, generally speaking, though there were aspects that could do with improvement (aren't there always!).

Things that I was happy, or at least satisfied, with include my general positioning and defensive coverage, nice sweep check (not caught on video), hardness of shots on goal and in-the-slot positioning, the fact I'm constantly moving, fitness level.

Things that need improvement include regulating the power of my passes (how often did the puck arrive too far ahead of a player to be of any use?), being a little more assertive onto the puck defensively (ie. aim at breaking up plays and turning over possession rather than a policy of denial), more talk.

A fitting game to end a fun season.